The present invention relates to connecting a light-conducting filament, fiber, fiber bundle or light pipe to the entrance or exit window of a destination or source of light transmitted by and through the conductor.
Light-conducting fibers have been used for a variety of purposes, including the transmission of information over larger or smaller distances. Fiber optics is used more and more for transmitting signals and data in that manner within a system, such as a data processing system, or a control system in vehicles, in planes, in railroad engines, in machine tools, or even in sophisticated consumer appliances. Of particular interest here is the electrical isolation between electrical components being interconnected in that fashion.
In practice, these light-conducting fibers are interposed between spatially separated, electrical, printed circuit boards, one of them, e.g., including and supporting a light source among several threaded circuit elements on that board, and another board holding a light receiver. The light-conducting fibers are affixed and secured to that source and to that receiver. Plugs, connectors, and sockets for that purpose are, for example, of the variety as described in a paper published in "Elektronische Entwicklung," Volume 11, page 44 et seq.
The known connectors are disadvantaged by complications arising when components to which the fibers are to be connected have to be changed, exchanged (e.g., replaced because of defects, etc.). The plug-in type connection, as described on page 46, et seq. of the above-mentioned paper, requires integration of rather large socket parts in the printed circuit. This, in turn, encumbers the board as a whole. Moreover, such a board may be a general input/output board and may, therefore, accommodate several of such connections, obviously compounding the problem.